What is SISu?

The Sequencing Initiative Suomi (SISu) search engine offers a way to search for data on sequence variants in Finns. It provides valuable summary data for researchers and clinicians as well as other people having an interest in genetics in Finland. With SISu, you can examine the attributes and appearance of different variants in Finnish cohorts and see their aggregate distribution in Finland visualized on a map. In the current version users can search for summary data on single nucleotide variants and indels from exomes of over 10 000 individuals sequenced in disease-specific and population genetic studies. The SISu project is an international collaboration between multiple research groups aiming to build tools for genomic medicine. The first version of the SISu search engine was released in 2014. The project is coordinated in the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) at the University of Helsinki.

SISu web page and search engine released

Friday, September 16, 2016

The Sequencing Initiative Suomi (SISu) project launched its renewed website and search engine. The user interface of the new SISu v4.1 web service has been redesigned based on interviews and usability tests to make the website more informative and user friendly.

The most important new feature implemented is the new visualization tool which combines geospatial information with genome variant data. With this tool, the user can get information about the county-specific frequencies of alleles that are present in the FINRISK data set. Depending on the rarity of the allele, the tool shows either county of residence of individual carriers or a color-coded visualization of the allele frequencies in Finland.